“Toby and Angie’s adoption was approved this afternoon. Did you know that?”
“Yeah. I saw him and your uncle James together. D’you think he’s the one who gave him that money?”
“Aunt Jeanne wouldn’t take the money he wanted to give her, so why not? He can afford it.” She clasped her arms around her waist, trying to keep the pieces of herself from splintering on the road and nodded toward the festivities. “Everyone in there is celebrating,” she said painfully. “Everyone in there is happy. Julia and Liam can walk into a room and light it up simply by looking at each other. Colton and Stacey are like two halves of a whole. I think Jude would lay down his life for Gabi and Christopher and Kinsley—” Her voice broke. “They’re all happy. They’re all in love. Is it so wrong to want that, too?”
“No.”
She turned on her heel and looked up at him. “I could marry you, Quinn,” she whispered. “Justice of the peace or a minister. It wouldn’t matter. I could stand up in front of either and promise to love you for the rest of my days. And I wouldn’t be lying.” She sniffed but the tears kept coming. “But the marriage would be a lie, because I know you don’t love me. And I can’t live like that.” She turned again, desperate to go somewhere, anywhere, for a little peace.
“And I can’t live without you.”
Had she gone so far over the edge that she was hearing things now, too?
“Don’t leave me.”
She sucked in a shuddering breath.
“Amelia.” He closed his hands over her shoulders and turned her toward him. “Please.” His low voice cracked. “Don’t leave me.” His fingers tightened, almost painfully.
“Quinn—”
He closed his mouth over hers, his hands moving to cradle her face. “Don’t,” he said hoarsely, brushing his thumbs over her cheeks. “I can take anything but that.”
She could no more stop her hands from grasping his shoulders than she could stop loving him.
He kissed her again, lightly. Tenderly. The way he had that very first time. “If you leave me, I won’t be able to take it. I love you,” he whispered. “More than I’ve ever loved anything or anyone. And I am terrified. Okay?”
She wound her arms behind his neck, her heart cracking wide. “Nothing terrifies you.”
“Not being good enough for you does.” He dragged her arms away, holding them captive between them. “Not being a good enough father.” He shook her gently, as if trying to convince her. “Not being a good enough husband. If I failed you or the baby—”
“You won’t,” she cried. “You can’t fail me if you’d just love me. You think I’m not afraid? I don’t even know how to make a baby’s bottle. Infants can’t eat peanut butter sandwiches!”
He folded her against him, tucking her head into his shoulder. “I know how to make a bottle,” he said roughly. “Jess made me learn years ago. That’s the easy stuff, Amelia. I’m talking about a life. What do I have to offer you?”
“Your heart,” she said thickly. “Offer your heart! It’s the only thing that matters. If you’re afraid, be afraid with me. I can’t bear it if you shut me out.”
“Oh, my God,” a voice said from nearby, startling them both. “Get a room or get on with it.”
Amelia stared into the darkness, appalled when Ophelia Malone strolled closer. All of her pain, her uncertainty where Quinn was concerned, coalesced into a ball of hatred toward the paparazzo. “You.” She started to launch herself at the dreadful woman, but Quinn held her back. “Haven’t you done enough?”
“Evidently not.” Ophelia sighed slightly. She held out her hands to her sides and Amelia spotted the camera she was holding.
She pulled against Quinn, but again he held fast. “She’s not worth it.” His voice was cutting.
“Why do you do this?” Amelia demanded of the woman. “Why do you go around making peoples’ lives a misery? Is the money that good? Is it just that you enjoy tearing people’s lives to shreds? What is it?”
“Oh, the money was good. Very, very good. But it didn’t work anyway.” Ophelia circled around them, giving Amelia’s clawed fingers a wide berth. “Even knowing what sort of person you really are, Lord Banning still isn’t giving my sister a chance.”
Amelia shook her head, suddenly lost. “What?”
Ophelia sighed again. “You really are as dumb as a post,” she mocked. “Your rancher there has more smarts than you do. At least he built that successful little ranch of his out of nothing but ashes. What have you ever done but smile pretty for the cameras while your mummy does all that charitable work that has people thinking she’s such a saint?”
Quinn set Amelia to one side of him and snatched Ophelia’s wrist with his free hand, making the other woman drop the camera. “Keep it up,” he spat, “and I’ll let her at you.”
“Who’s your sister?”
Ophelia shook off Quinn’s hold and crouched down to pick up the two pieces of the camera. She held up the lens to the light from the Cantina, then tossed it off to the side of the road. “So much for that pricey little thing.” She pushed to her feet. “Astrid,” she clipped. She circled around Quinn until she was near Amelia again. “Astrid is my sister and if it weren’t for you and your eminently suitable pedigree, Lord Banning would have chosen her. He would have gone against that decrepit father of his and married my sister whether she was a common shop girl or not!”
“You’re insane,” Amelia whispered, shocked to her very core.
Ophelia held out her arms. “Guilty as charged, no doubt.” She suddenly tossed the camera at them and Quinn caught it midair before it could hit Amelia. “I don’t have the stomach for this anymore. I’d like to say I hope you’ll be happy together, but we all know I’d be lying.” She turned on her heel and started walking down the street. “Taa taa, darlings.”
Amelia pulled against Quinn’s hold.
“Let her go,” he muttered.
“She’s…she’s vile! I can’t believe that woman is Astrid’s sister.”
He dropped the camera on the ground and turned her back into his arms, his hands sweeping down her back. “You know her?”
“Astrid? She sells coffee in James’s building. And he’s crazy about her. But he’s had years to go against his family and marry her. Now that he’s the Earl of Estingwood, he could do whatever he wants. But he won’t.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s a commoner,” Amelia said simply. “She’s divorced. She has a child. Take your pick.”
“I thought that stuff didn’t matter anymore.”
“It matters to the Bannings. And above all things, James is loyal to his family.”
He pressed his lips against her temple. “I don’t want to talk about James.”
“Neither do I.” From the corner of her eye, though, she kept watch of Ophelia, long enough to see the woman climb into an SUV and roar off down the street in the opposite direction.
Quinn suddenly pushed her away from him. “Where were we?”
Her throat tightened. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“I do.” Holding her hands, he abruptly went down on one knee, right there in the middle of the street. “I think this is the way it’s supposed to go. Never did it before.”
She inhaled sharply. “Quinn—”
“My heart is yours, Amelia Fortune Chesterfield. It has been from the second you agreed to a dance with a simple cowboy.”
Tears flooded her eyes. “So is mine. Yours, I mean. My heart.” She laughed brokenly. “I’m making a mishmash. And there’s nothing simple about you.”
“Will you marry me?”
She nodded and pulled on his hands. “Yes. I don’t want you on your knees, I just want you by my side.”
He rose and caught her close. “Preacher or a JP?”
/> She dragged his head to hers. “As long as it’s soon, I don’t care,” she said thickly, and pressed her mouth to his. Joy was bubbling through her, making her feel dizzy with it. “Take me home?”
He cradled her tightly, lifting her right off her feet. “Kissing me like that is how getting you pregnant started off,” he warned. And then he laughed a little and swore. “I can’t. I don’t have my truck. I rode here with Jess.”
She groaned. “I want to be alone with you.” She sank her fingers through his hair, reveling in the realization that she could. “I don’t care how shameless that sounds. I need to be alone with you.”
“You’re killing me,” he said gruffly, and kissed her so softly, so sweetly, that she would have fallen in love with him all over again if she hadn’t already done so.
Then he gently set her back on her feet. Kissed her forehead. Her cheeks. “We’ll go back and borrow some keys from someone.”
“And then you’ll take me home?”
He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers. “And then I’ll take you home.” They started back toward the Cantina, but Amelia suddenly ducked under his arm and ran back to retrieve Ophelia’s camera.
“What do you want that thing for?”
She pulled his arm over her shoulder once more and fiddled with the camera as they continued walking back to the Cantina. “There’s got to be a memory card in here somewhere.” She held up the camera, squinting in the light from the strands hanging in the trees. “Ah.” She spotted the storage compartment and freed the tiny square inside before handing the camera to Quinn. “Don’t toss that aside either,” she warned. “There might be internal memory or something that will need to be erased.”
“Ophelia’s gone.” He brushed his hand down her hair. “Nobody else is going to care about that thing.”
“Probably,” she agreed, “But I’m not taking any chances.” She went over to one of the umbrella-covered tables and reached for one of the candles burning inside short jars. “Mind if I borrow this for a moment?” she asked the people sitting there, and when there were no objections, carried it back to him.
Holding the jar between them, she dropped the memory disk onto the flame. “No more Ophelia Malone,” she murmured, watching the thing begin to sizzle and melt, and feeling like the last load was lifting from her shoulders.
When the memory card was no longer recognizable as anything but a misshapen blob of plastic, she blew out the candle and carefully plucked it out of the wax.
Then she dropped it on the road and ground it fervently beneath her heel.
Quinn lifted the candle out of her hand and set it back on the table. “Remind me never to make you really mad,” he said when she finally stopped grinding.
“I know how to fox hunt, too,” she told him, looping her arm through his. She couldn’t seem to get the smile off her face, but then she couldn’t imagine a reason why she needed to.
Quinn Drummond loved her.
What she’d feared was only a dream was real. And she was going to treasure that for the rest of their days.
“Fox hunt,” he repeated warily. But he was smiling, too, and he absently hooked the camera strap over his shoulder.
“My father taught us.” She looked up at the balcony above the umbrellas and saw her mother there, talking with Orlando Mendoza and looking unusually animated. “Once upon a time my father was a pilot,” she murmured, nodding toward the balcony. “The Royal Air Force.”
Quinn pulled her close against his side once more, as if he couldn’t stand even a few inches separating them. He tilted his head looking upward, his gaze sharpening slightly. “They look—”
“Cozy,” Amelia finished.
“Interesting.” He steered her toward the entrance of the Cantina that was no less crowded than it had been earlier. “Maybe Horseback Hollow will end up appealing to more of the Fortune Chesterfields.”
As much as the idea delighted her, she was presently more interested in Quinn. “You promised something about keys?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Quinn said softly and kissed her right there in front of the Hollows Cantina for all the world to see. Then he tugged her after him through the crowds. Jess and Mac were sitting all cozied up together at their small table, clearly unworried whether he ever returned or not. The stairs were still crowded and he exhaled impatiently. But Amelia dragged him through the swinging doors to the kitchen where there was another staircase.
Not grand. Not the center of attention. But entirely welcome. At the top, he threaded his way around the tables there.
Lady Josephine was sitting once more next to Jeanne Marie and Deke and her smile deepened when she saw them. “Have you figured out where your fortune is, then, Quinn?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said and lifted his hand linked with Amelia’s. “I surely have.” His eyes met Amelia’s. “Love’s the fortune.”
Her smile trembled and she leaned into him. “Keys,” she whispered.
He threw back his head and laughed. “Keys.” He spotted Liam. “Lend me your truck for the night and I’ll consider selling Rocky.”
Liam reached into his pocket and tossed the keys over several heads. Quinn caught them handily.
Amelia giggled, squeezing his hand.
And they raced for the stairs.
Epilogue
Quinn parked his truck near the tree house tree and went around to open Amelia’s door. “Come on.”
She tilted her head up toward his, a smile on her face below the bandana he’d tied around her eyes before they’d left the ranch house.
It had been a week since the Cantina’s grand opening. A week during which they’d barely left one another’s side. A week in which it was finally sinking in that Amelia was his.
She loved him. She wasn’t going anywhere. She was filling the empty parts of him, and together they’d fill the empty rooms of their home.
“What are we doing?” Her voice was full of laughter.
“You’ll see.” He took her hands and helped her out of the truck.
“Not exactly.” Her lips tilted. “Since you’ve blindfolded me.” She turned her head from side to side as he drew her closer to the tree, obviously trying to get a sense of where they were. “Do I hear the creek?”
He moved behind her and slid his hands around her waist and kissed her neck below her ear, right where he knew it would make her shiver. “Good instincts.”
She sighed a little, shimmied a little with that shiver, and covered his hands with hers, pressing them against her belly. She rubbed her head against his chest. “On occasion. I picked you, didn’t I?”
“That you did.” He kissed her earlobe. “Okay, you can look.”
She tugged the bandanna off her head.
“I knew it,” she said, laughing in her triumph. She peered up into the tree branches. “You’ve finished the floor! When did you have time to do that?”
He’d finished a lot more than that. “When you’re lazing around in bed, snoring.”
“I don’t snore.”
“You do.” He kissed her nose. “Daintily. Like the lady that you are.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, that makes it all right then.”
He laughed softly. “It’s safe for us to go up.”
Her dark eyes roved over his face while a smile played around her soft lips. “Us? As in now you’re going to let me climb a tree?”
His hands slid down her hips. “Only because I’m here with you. So do you want to go up or not?”
Her eyes sparkled. “What do you think?” She quickly yanked off the sandals she’d been wearing and tossed them onto the grass, then set her bare toes on the first foothold and deftly began climbing.
“Just go slow, okay? Be careful.”
She looked over her shoulder at him, grin
ning and looking more like a teenaged girl than a pregnant woman. “Fine warning from the man who puts temptation in my path.”
She continued up with Quinn standing below her, and between his distraction over the view of her bare legs beneath her summery pink dress as she went, even he had to admit that she seemed to know exactly what she was doing. “How often did you say you used to climb trees?”
She laughed. She’d reached the base of the tree house and pushed open the door in the floor. “Every day that I could get away with it.” In seconds, she’d clambered through the hatch, and then there was only silence.
He imagined her up there, seeing the preparations he’d made early that morning while she’d been sleeping in his bed.
Their bed.
A moment later, she leaned over the high side boards that formed the walls of the tree house, her long hair hanging down past her shoulders. Her youthful grin was gone, replaced by a soft expression. “Are you going to stand around down there, or join me?”
He kicked off his own shoes and climbed up.
It didn’t take him any longer than it had her, but in that brief time she’d still managed to slip out of her dress, and was laying on the thick blankets he’d spread out on one side of the structure.
He let out a breath.
She propped her head on her hand and smiled slightly, holding one of the daisies he’d stuck in a jar to her nose. She was wearing sheer panties and a bra the same pale blue color as the Texas sky. “This is what you had in mind, isn’t it?”
He crawled through the door and dropped it back in place. “Yeah.” He shucked his own clothes, pitching them in the corner.
Her lashes swept down and pink color touched her cheeks. “I’m wondering if Peter Pan ever got up to such mischief.”
He knelt down beside her, and she rolled onto her back, her hair pooling out around her head. “Peter Pan was a boy,” he murmured, sliding one strap off her shoulder and kissing the creamy skin there.
She ran her thigh against his as she bent her knee and dropped the flower in favor of closing her hand boldly around him. “And you’re no boy.”
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